about going

I vividly remember what it was like driving to college on move-in day.

I was in the backseat of my parents' car feeling like I could either hysterically sob and/or projectile vomit everywhere.

Getting accepted into college was exciting.  But leaving and actually GOING to college? Not so much. Abandoning my high school and my friends and my town and my family felt like the scariest and most uncomfortable thing I could do.  I sat in the backseat and prayed that somehow I'd wake up in my old bed, like everything had just been a dream, that I wasn't driving at what felt like lightning speed toward the biggest transition of my life to date.

I made my dad stop every two seconds for a "bathroom break" or insisted that I needed coffee from every fast food place we drove by that served it. Despite my best efforts, we eventually made it to school and that night I wept (silently, not wanting my new roomie to think I was too much of a freak) in bed for hours.

I'm thinking about this because I recently read through the book of Jonah.  I love how the story is not only magical but relatable.  The Lord calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, and he is so full of fear that he flees and jumps on a ship to get as far away from there as he can.

Here is a truth about me -- when I feel like I'm being asked to go someplace new, or asked to go emotionally or spiritually into an area of forgiveness or grace, usually I would really rather not.

But a truth about God is this -- He will ask you to go someplace you may not choose to be, and it will be hard.  But it will also be beautiful.

It is astonishing to me how persistent the Lord is with Jonah - that He doesn't even stop short of carrying him via whale stomach to the place He knew he should be - how unbelievable is that?  And it both scares me and encourages me that there is nothing I can do to avoid arriving on the exact right shore at exactly the right time.  

When Jonah finally arrives in Nineveh his purposes there are carried out and the result is miraculous. The people repent and they begin to live life to the full.  And reading that story reminds me of those times when I have gone - or rather, been carried - to places I refused to go because my imagination simply wouldn't stretch to picture the blessings there.  

Maybe traveling to that place doesn't feel beautiful in the moment, and maybe your legs will be wobbly and your voice shaky, but one day you will be glad you went there because you were called and that call fulfilled itself in the course of your life. 

One day you will look back on the city you studied in for four years of your life and be surprised that you resisted it once.  Or you will remember a conversation that took the most courage you've ever possessed and how gorgeous it eventually became. 

And sometimes you must go more than once, to that hard place of forgiveness, or of grace.  You will be called there again and again because the goal of going is Perfection, not just Improvement.  And you will learn as you go often that you are not alone, and the comfort of that makes the going all that more powerful and all the more sweet.